Cuban prisoners work without wages and in bad conditions in a hospital in Matanzas

Havana/The hands of the Cuban janitors say everything about the hygienic situation of hospitals. Despite his efforts – more than evident in the calluses, sores and chemical burns of his fingers – there is no way that the health situation lifts head. The price of your impossible mission is paid by your health, as several admit Interviewees in a chronicle published this Saturday in the official press of the province of Matanzas.

Towards the end of the report, the reason for its bad conditions is discovered: they are imprisoned. There are 13 of them working – without salary, as the newspaper implies Girón– In the Hospital de Colón.

A gigantic P rum, drawn on a stoked pulover, points to those interviewed by Girón. The journalist wonders about the meaning of the initial, and concludes that he could mean “Pedro” or “Pablo”, but his true meaning is “imprisoned.” It is a comment that marks the tone of the note, extremely brings up in the case of an official medium.

The most devastating report is your photos. Shadows – they do not access to identify themselves, for fear of the reprisals of the managers – that advance through the corridors of the Matancos hospitals, hands that hold a spent mullet, arms and feet without protection, and most of them retire or already very spent, due to the hardness of their work.

Two of the photos show the fingers “eaten by acid”, without nails. “The gloves that give us are useless,” says one of the two prisoners of the Hospital de Colón who, “curious” for the opportunity to tell their story, they are interviewed. “Those we need are thick, of those who get to the elbow. I recently talked to my nephew, to see if he gets me a couple. Here to the Nasobuco I have to put it.”

“We are very few,” laments one of them. Obsessive with your work, despite the lack of media, and in fear that the report describes the status of the medical center and that costs you a punishment, asks again and again: “Did you see them clean?” It refers to the bathrooms.

The response – negative – serves the forced feet to justify dirt: they are not only few, but all have health destroyed by a task that, clearly, overcasses them. Mario Muñoz hospital is immense. It has 235 beds and many more “problems”, like all Cuban buildings. It was built to meet the needs of a wide area and, therefore, its original project included a considerable amount of bathrooms.

Its director says – “being honest” – that he does not have how to get gloves. Your alternative: Do not clean with acid every day. The substance has caused damage to those who barely have been there for two weeks of service, says one of the inmates.

Now, decades after its foundation and without the least maintenance, it is expected of the cleaning inmates who maintain in good condition a place that does not enough water and detergent to eliminate accumulated dirt for years.

The reaction of patients and hospital staff when seeing official journalists is revealing. When they approach, they cover their faces “with a handkerchief.” Overcome the initial suspicion, they speak even by the elbows. “The problem is that bathroom, which is in Candela,” says a patient with a hernia.

The bathroom, in theory, is cleaned by an inmate in the morning and in the afternoon, according to an old woman. When another patient listens to him by his side, he snows: “Don’t say lies! The bathroom is not cleaned every day.”

Inmates are just a part of the drama that the hospital lives. They often arrive, according to their director, serious social cases. It refers to beggars with mental illnesses. One of them carries “broken hair, beard of days, an immense coat and the right perneera of her pants rolled up to her knee, showing the skin in living flesh.”

“Social workers come, see them and identify their needs: soap, towel, spoon, glass, etc. What you see is an ulcer. He can do the treatment at home, but we are very sensitive with these cases and we almost always decide to enter them, to take care of them ourselves.” That, like all the comments of the director, is utopian, as prisoners imply.

Some try to escape, admits Girón. A nurse is responsible for monitoring them and ever manages to flee, because there are not enough nurses either.

In Mario Muñoz, their leaders allege, nobody runs out of attention … in the long run. There is a list of priorities that have the pregnant women first, in second to children, and in third to government officials. The enumeration stuns the journalist, but the hospital director launches a jocular justification: “A public administrator cannot be tooth, don’t you think?”